What is this?

The male osprey bird, one half of the couple raising their young on webcam, has been electrocuted.

Viewers of the webcam first noticed that the dad had disappeared on June 19. He had delivered some fresh fish to the young chicks and then he never returned. It is typical for the male ospreys to hunt for food while the female stays with the nest.

The male bird’s body was found a few days later. Hydro crews said he had crashed into a hydro line, which also caused a power outage.

In the wild, the absence of the male might be a death sentence for the newborn chicks.

However, Nelson Hydro are doing all they can to help the chicks survive the approximately five weeks it will take them to reach maturity. Several employees volunteered to help in their spare time and they received approval from the Ministry of Environment to provide the female and chicks with fish.

“Tuesday mid-morning we delivered fish into the nest using the largest bucket truck Nelson Hydro has. Both female and chicks ravenously fed on them. The biologist recommended bulk-supplementation every [two] days, so further efforts were made that afternoon to secure more fish for a Thursday feed, and to develop a less intrusive feeding method that would not require a large diesel bucket truck or keep the female off the nest for a protracted period,” Nelson Hydro said in a statement, speaking of their efforts last week.

So far everything seems to be working and fans of the webcam and the birds are hoping they will continue to thrive until they are ready to fly the nest.